


Seas Have Roared Between Us Since

by FictionPenned



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:01:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27186275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionPenned/pseuds/FictionPenned
Summary: It’s little more than a flash of an image here or a snippet of sound there, dozens of tiny, ghostlike impressions that barely raise alarm bells. Donna has always been exceptionally good at ignoring strange and unusual happenings, and this is especially true when the strange and unusual happenings are occurring within her own mind. She assumes that she must have had a bit too much to drink one night, accuses her particularly poor cook of a husband of serving her some bad chicken, dismisses it as the lingering remnants of a few-dozen-odd dreams. She blinks, compartmentalizes, and moves forward without scarcely a flinch or a passing thought to the matter. To Donna, this must simply be an irritating side-effect of growing older, of the head being too small to contain a lifetime of memories. Inevitably, stuff begins bleeds through, newly freed from its original context, and some of it is bound to be nonsense and meaningless drivel — long forgotten children’s programming, low budget horror movies, and the like.It's hardly worth losing a good night’s sleep over, yet the ever-present leak keeps rousing her in the middle of the night.Written for Fic In A Box 2020.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Seas Have Roared Between Us Since

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gwenynnefydd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/gifts).



It starts slowly, much like the slow and inexorable leaking of a faulty tap.

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

It’s little more than a flash of an image here or a snippet of sound there, dozens of tiny, ghostlike impressions that barely raise alarm bells. Donna has always been exceptionally good at ignoring strange and unusual happenings, and this is especially true when the strange and unusual happenings are occurring within her own mind. She assumes that she must have had a bit too much to drink one night, accuses her particularly poor cook of a husband of serving her some bad chicken, dismisses it as the lingering remnants of a few-dozen-odd dreams. She blinks, compartmentalizes, and moves forward without scarcely a flinch or a passing thought to the matter. To Donna, this must simply be an irritating side-effect of growing older, of the head being too small to contain a lifetime of memories. Inevitably, stuff begins bleeds through, newly freed from its original context, and some of it is bound to be nonsense and meaningless drivel — long forgotten children’s programming, low budget horror movies, and the like.

It's hardly worth losing a good night’s sleep over, yet the ever-present leak keeps rousing her in the middle of the night.

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

 _Glasses_ …

 _Wasps_ …

 _Planets_ …

There are overarching themes, but none of the impressions seem to fit together into a coherent whole. It is roughly akin to trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces are missing and the assembler can’t seem to gather up the motivation required to rally a search party. Not that she’d even know where to look, if she did. Digging through the mind isn’t nearly as easy as lifting up the cushions on your sofa or digging through a knick-knack drawer. Memories are slippery, wily, desperate to misbehave. You might as well chalk it up as a loss before you’ve even gotten started.

So that is exactly what Donna does for a while. She coexists with the leaky faucet, gritting her teeth, nursing her frustration, and pretending to be completely unbothered by the whole affair. People close to her notice that she is a bit closer to snapping at them than she usually is, perpetually tiptoeing upon the knife-edge of her quick temper, because to _pretend_ to be unbothered and to _truly_ _be_ unbothered are two entirely different things.

At the urging of a concerned friend, Donna eventually books an appointment with a therapist.

Together, they walk through the minefield of the images, picking apart their possible significance, examining the symbology of it all. It doesn’t make the leak stop, but it does leave Donna feeling like she is better equipped to deal with the problem. It soothes the raw and exposed ending of her nerves and dulls the rougher edges of her anger.

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

 _Drip_ …

 _Breathe in_ …

 _Hold for a count of five_ …

 _Breathe out_ …

Donna proceeds to go about her life as normal, or at least, as normal as she can manage, given the circumstances. She grabs drinks with her friends and earns her commission and spends long nights with her legs draped across her husband’s lap as they judge the housemates on this season of _Celebrity Big Brother_.

She insists upon feeling normal, and as a result, she almost forgets about the leak.

And in forgetting, she fails to pinpoint the moment when it increases in intensity.

No longer is it a simple drip, rendered ignorable by sheer force of will alone. Rather, it has blossomed into a scattered stream of consciousness, worming its way into her thoughts as she goes about her day.

_You know, if you installed a handy bit of alien code on your husband’s phone, you could probably figure out whether or not he’s really hanging out with Terry on Monday nights and not secretly getting cozy with a giant spider. It’d be easy. Bit of thievery, quick zap with a sonic, and a bit of luck and you’ll stop thinking about it._

The thought strikes seemingly out of nowhere as Donna speaks with a pair of clients, leaving her tongue-tied and speechless. It feels both of her and not of her at the same time — a natural extension of her own mind that’s been augmented with something other. It casts a shiver down her spine and raises goosebumps on her arms, and when the couple she’s supposed to be selling to lean across the counter and ask if she’s okay, she is unable to come up with a suitable answer.

She stumbles over the first syllable, but eventually busts her way through the wall with so much feigned confidence that it almost reads as unbridled aggression.

_I’m fine._

_Nothing to see here._

_Nothing at all._

_Just a bit of a drip._

_Now remind me, where did we leave off?_

Except it is no longer just a drip. It’s a burgeoning downpour. She feels like her mind is overflowing — full to the brim with thoughts that are hers but not hers, familiar but not familiar, human but somehow alien. The flashes have grown into something longer — sustained, roving, prismatic pulses of light shooting in all directions, each accompanied by an ominous roll of thunder. It is, in a word, overwhelming. She sinks her back teeth into the inside of her cheek, bottling up fear and worry and an inexplicable sense of relief as she fights to finish the conversation, and as soon as she does, she sticks her head into her boss’s office and lets her know that she’s taking the rest of the day off.

She considers taking a taxi in order to get home faster, but one of the many things forcing its way into her mind is the sharp memory of a taxi being hijacked by a robot Santa, and a terrifying jump across the motorway. Instead, she half-walks, half-jogs the several blocks back to the flat that she shares with her husband, taking her heels off and scurrying in her pantyhose feet in order to move a little bit faster. It turns her into a midday spectacle, but she greets every turned head and muttered remark with a sharply snapped, “Mind your own business, won’t you?”

Thankfully, when she finally turns the knob and steps into the relative privacy of her flat, her husband is not home. She drops her shoes in the middle of the hallway and then steps into the shower, still fully clothed, turns on the hot water, and sits beneath the stream with her knees pulled tightly to her chest. Here, she no longer feels compelled to fight the fear. She lets it take over, lets the memories play out in her mind’s eye, and it is only when the water grows cold and her shock seems to have passed when she finally begins to sort through them and attempt to make sense of it all.

The Doctor.

She traveled with the Doctor in a ship called the TARDIS. Earth was almost destroyed. Agatha Christie was attacked by a giant wasp. The oldest library in the world was plagued by carnivorous shadows. And, perhaps worst of all, the Doctor braced his hands on either side of her head and apologized before she wiped it all from her mind.

That is the hardest thing.

Not the aliens.

Not the running.

But the loss at the end of it all.

For a single, shining moment, Donna Temple-Noble saved the universe, and then the very memory of it was stolen from her by someone who she trusted.

And he hadn’t even been competent enough to make it stick.

A desperate, hollow laugh hiccups in the back of her throat. Figures, the Doctor always was confident, even in his failures. That was why he needed her, after all. Why she insisted on staying by his side. He needed someone to say no, someone to drag him back down to Earth whenever he threatens to cling to that inflated ego of his and float away. Up until that last moment, she was that person for him. She saved people. She mattered. And that was taken from her.

Despite her exhaustion, she is itching to see him again, to slap him right across that smug alien face of his, to prove to herself that this is all real, and not just something she dreamed up.

When she finally manages to stand up and haul herself out of the shower, she pulls out her phone and begins to run a few internet searches, just to make sure that she hasn’t gone entirely batty. It’s incredibly difficult to find the information she needs, but tucked away in obscure corners of the internet, in Reddit posts, in long-defunct conspiracy forums, on archived tabloid sites, she finds traces that corroborate this new revelation.

She spends hours looking through it all.

Her husband comes home, kisses her on the cheek, and asks what she’s doing, and she does not answer. He doesn’t take it personally — he merely shrugs and goes about his evening and tells her that he is around if she needs him — and gratitude flutters in her heart. She wants to include him in this, she really does, but she doesn’t know how to even begin to explain the situation when she barely understands it herself.

She pulls her old cellphone out of a dusty shoebox in the linen closet, plugging it into the wall to charge before booting it up and searching through the contacts, wondering if she’ll find the Doctor’s number listed among them. She doesn’t, but she does find the number of one “Dr. Martha Jones.”

She remembers Martha Jones a little. Mostly, she remembers liking her.

After a moment of hesitation, she dials the number.

It doesn’t connect.

With a frustrated huff and a barely-suppressed curse, she tosses the outdated tech onto the bed.

It takes an embarrassing amount of time for her to realize that with the same tools she had used a moment ago, she can probably find Martha’s new number. Doctors are almost always on the internet. They have websites and speak at conferences and network with their peers, and surely even someone who was heavily involved with a time-traveling fellow from space has those things, too.

She returns to the laptop, types in a few words, and another number pops up on the screen.

She calls it, and reaches voicemail.

“This is Dr. Martha Jones, medical doctor and researcher. I am unable to come to the phone right now, but please leave me a message after the tone.”

The tone sounds.

Donna flounders. “This is Donna. Donna Noble. Do you know anything about the Doctor?”

She hangs up almost immediately, and then, slightly irritated at herself for the oversight, leaves a call-back number and starts counting the very, very long minutes between the message and its reply.

Dr. Martha Jones does not call her back. Instead, Donna receives an email with a calendar event and a short note. “After the passing of the original founder, I took over the leadership of the Companion Support Network. We meet on the second Tuesday of the month. The newest member is always in charge of providing refreshment. I think you’ll find the answers you’re looking for here, and speaking for myself, I’ll enjoy seeing you again, Donna. P.S. Congratulations on getting hitched!”

The second Tuesday is three days away, and it feels like an eternity.

Donna spends that time sorting through the new memories that bleed through, writing them down, categorizing them into folders on her desktop sorted by year and category and a vague sense of location. It helps, but she is still missing much of the meat that ties it all together, and every passing moment leaves her angrier and angrier about the life and the memories that she were denied to her.  
  
_Drip._  
  
_Rain._  
  
_Pour._  
  
_Drown._

She picks up sandwiches on her way to the meeting, trepidation racing through her veins, tongue armed with a dozen accusations and defenses in case the introductions go awry or she finds that she doesn’t belong.

But when she steps into the conference room, a dozen heads turn, and she is greeted with hugs and smiles filled with such warmth and immediate understanding that the worst of her ire seems to melt away entirely.

“Welcome, Donna,” Martha says, rising to greet her, a kind, familiar grin firmly situated upon her lips. “I’ve filled the others in on your situation, and as a start, we’d like to reassure you that you’re not alone, and to let you know that if you need anything, at any hour, we’re happy to come to your aide.”

Donna, who had felt so isolated since her memories began to return, suddenly confronted with the comfort of real people with real faces who are not only kind to her, but believe in the truth of her story, is faced with the sudden, shaking impulse to burst into tears. She is, however, not the crying sort, so instead, she says, “Does one of you do middle of the night beer runs?”

A certain causticness slides into her tone, meant to cover up the vulnerability that lurks beneath, but instead of taking affront, the room merely laughs and smiles and nods.

“Take a seat, Donna. We’ll get started on names.”

Everyone has their own story, their own betrayal, their own baggage. None are quite on the level of hers, but they’re all meaningful, all impactful, all traumatic in their own way. The Doctor sweeps into people’s lives and then leaves them behind. It is a terrible, a terrible thing, but to know that other people have experienced it is, in and of itself, a comfort, and for the first time in days, Donna finally begins to relax and breathe easily.

The Doctor may not have saved her, but his old friends might be able to pick up the slack, and for now, that’s good enough for her.

But she resolves to keeping holding onto the impulse to slap him, just in case they ever cross paths again.

So far as she sees it, slapping the Doctor would do everyone a world of good.  
  
And maybe it would be enough of a distraction that she'll _finally_ be able to tear her thoughts away from the leak and learn to live with it instead of sinking. 


End file.
